A Plea to CA for a new engine instead of a soon next Total War game. DX12 may deal the cards anew for Rome 2.

[Jonoleth Irenicus]

Obviously voted yes, but, let's face the truth: CA doesn't give a about fan opinions (we have seen it in Rome II, and considering the last Q&A...).
Plus, the engine/performance/optimization department is the most incompetent of all.

So, at the end, we have only to laugh (or cry).

... or move on.

TW could definitely do with a full "do-over", but as has been suggested : this engine will do just fine for re-hashes and arcade / console releases.

i love how you people are experts on engines all of a sudden.. when you're anything but

A sweeping generalization combined with a provocation.

Looking to start a fire ?

[SirPeacemaker]

Yes I want this schitty Warscape engine gone, but the thing is, CA never listen to the fans. So there is no point for any poll.

[alQamar]

Yes I want this schitty Warscape engine gone, but the thing is, CA never listen to the fans. So there is no point for any poll.

I wouldn't see it that absolute.

The over 2200 votes lead to an answer. And a thinkover at CA the 1500 people at the total war petition brought us back bigger maps and more map variety, custom funds for multiplayer, and some more. So I would be cautious to state things / polls are useless at all.
We need just a significant amount of votes.

[SirPeacemaker]

So I would be cautious to state things / polls are useless at all.
We need just a significant amount of votes.

And what about the official "bring back family tree" poll? Wasnt that significant enough?

[alQamar]

Sure it is but did they ignore that one? No they "are surprised by the passion" they said. And only if they in addition said they will not make it happen in Rome 2 this file isn't close yet. They also stated they won't port Rome 2 of Windows now they changed minds for Steam OS and won't change the unit cards they now included unit numbers in patch 5.
Their words aren't worth the breath.

[Adreno]

i love how you people are experts on engines all of a sudden.. when you're anything but

[SamueleD]

I think we are reaching the point where saying that "many people still have 32-bit so, making a game 64-bit only is bad for business" is less and less correct. 64-bit OS is inevitably going to replace 32-bit OS, simply because the vast majority of new PCs are sold with a 64-bit OS, the vast majority of PC that can actually run games are 64-bit.
Just look at the steam survey: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ Windows machines are 94.56% of all machines running Steam (which a good majority of gamers have and all Rome II players have), 71,57% (of all, not just Windows) are 64-bit Windows, leaving around 23% (of all) as 32-bit Windows, and the OS that has had the biggest growth (+0.99%) is Windows 8 64-bit, followed by a version of OSX and Windows 8.1 64-bit. Of this 23% there is a good chance that most don't have the technical capabilities to run games like Rome II.

Basically making a game in 32-bit, instead of 64-bit, means hampering your game potential for the sake of an ever shrinking share of your costumer base, which doesn't seem like a very smart thing to do to me.

[alQamar]

Q: The upgrade from a current Windows Vista / 7 / 8 to a 64bit version would cost me additional money
A: That is not true. If you have a legit Windows Key you are allowed to use it either for a 32bit or 64bit installment. So all you need is a DVD for the installation, which is easy to get for free.

I just checked how much people would be able to upgrade their Windows to a 64bit version for free:

With them changing the portion of 64bit users would't be 71 % but then stunning 87,6 %. Again I would like to ask those 12% left on Windows XP 32bit and willing to play Rome 2 and future TW games to upgrade their rigs instead of limiting the majority. CoD is perfect example. It has high hardware requirements but as it came to the first specs released "wrong" on nvidia.com mentioned no 32bit support people got upset and they regret via Twitte, telling the final specs aren't out. A few days ago they officially confirmed them.

[Bobz]

While most criticisms directed at the engine are almost certainly misplaced, moving to 64-bits will probably require a new engine.

[alQamar]

While most criticisms directed at the engine are almost certainly misplaced, moving to 64-bits will probably require a new engine.

That's the reason for this thread and poll.

[Hellowenisti]

I agree with this and I would vote for YES if I could.

[Sir_Red]

even the mass market Call of Duty have ditched 32bit for their new game. CA are shooting themselves in the foot by catering to the 5% who expect their 7 year old home PC to run the latest games

[Humble Warrior]

even the mass market Call of Duty have ditched 32bit for their new game. CA are shooting themselves in the foot by catering to the 5% who expect their 7 year old home PC to run the latest games

I always assumed TW was 64 bit and just went 32 for those who didn`t have it. So I`ve been using 64 bit for years with all this extra Ram and getting no benefit at all?

Does TW even use more than 1 or 2 cores yet?

I suspect the answer is still no.

[krisslanza]

I always assumed TW was 64 bit and just went 32 for those who didn`t have it. So I`ve been using 64 bit for years with all this extra Ram and getting no benefit at all?

Does TW even use more than 1 or 2 cores yet?

I suspect the answer is still no.

I'm pretty sure TW is a multi-core capable game, that isn't something difficult to do, so long as you set out to do it from the get-go anyway. The engine is just limited to 32-bit so that way anyone can play it.

[alQamar]

I always assumed TW was 64 bit and just went 32 for those who didn`t have it. So I`ve been using 64 bit for years with all this extra Ram and getting no benefit at all?

Does TW even use more than 1 or 2 cores yet?

I suspect the answer is still no.

The answer is a clear yes for both questions. For the core utilisation: even Shogun 2 did that. Rome will utilize up to 12 threads even but all those does not lead into epic performance.

I didn't vote, because if Rome 2 on this engine is garbage, then the next Total War on the next engine would be an outright disaster.

Very interesting approach though.

[krisslanza]

The answer is a clear yes for both questions. For the core utilisation: even Shogun 2 did that. Rome will utilize up to 12 threads even but all those does not lead into epic performance.

Yeah, unfortunately while a strong CPU is good, RAM is a pretty big bottleneck. I do hear even a jump from 4 to 6GB of RAM is pretty significant.

[alQamar]

Yeah, unfortunately while a strong CPU is good, RAM is a pretty big bottleneck. I do hear even a jump from 4 to 6GB of RAM is pretty significant.

Which is not quite right. Rome 2 is designed to have a low RAM keynote to run on all possible computers, but the price for that is cut out features and content. Even if CA was partly willing to not cut down the game, as they said they run out of memory because the 32bit engine.

Actually upgrading a 4 GB to 6 GB or more RAM gives you quite nothing in performance except a little release in loading times.

RAM is a bottleneck if Rome 2 has been shipped out as planned with HD textures and stuff and more animations and features galore it deserved. Currently the CPU is the biggest bottleneck (and here) as they made wrong decisions how to get it busy to achieve "simulatneous" multicore utilisation and wrecked things up with that moving certain graphical feature from the GPU to the CPU.

[Fallen Phalangite]

Very interesting approach though.

Until they can release an unbroken game on this engine, they have no reason to progress to a new engine. It'll just be the same , just in a shiner box.

[Bento]

Apart from the 32bit - 64bit issue, a new engine could perhaps allow them to develop an engine that copes with many-on-one handtohand combat, shields functioning as shields ( shocker ! ), troop spacing in h2h and more along these lines.
Warscape coped just barely in Shogun, but its limitations are now fairly stark in Rome2.

[General Maximus]

By the way, as it turns out, most battle animations (as long as you don't count the 1v1), sound and unit models are perfectly fine. The problems are with the gameplay (among a lot of other things). If only CA didn't refuse to fix that, we would have a gem of a game right now. They can still do that, they already have the models and sounds and animations ready.

But I would say, they should create a new engine and patch the game with it, while importing the good bits of the game (especially models, ambient sounds and animations) into the new engine. But that's impossible now I think...